If that was your first thought upon looking at this page today, I understand. After seeing the same smiling face (and his award-winning prose) every Sunday for the past two decades, I’ll probably have the same reaction.

And the fact that Little epitomizes community journalism, and thus made Chico a better place to live, only adds to it.

I wouldn’t be here without him. Very few people in this building at 400 East Park Ave. would be here without him. There’s no way any of us can ever thank him enough — except, of course, by going forth and being the best journalists we can be.

And now, we go on. The question is, to where?

Based on some early feedback (first-hand and via social media), many of you are quite curious about the new editor and what course I might be charting for the E-R. That became obvious within a few hours of the Dec. 9 story announcing I’d be the editor in 2019.

“The new editor worked eight years at the San Francisco Chronicle? Great. Is he going to turn the E-R into a liberal advocacy rag?” wrote one person on Facebook.

“I sure hope this doesn’t mean the E-R is going back to embracing Tea Party politics,” wrote another.

“Wait. No more David Little?” wrote a third, fourth, fifth and more.

It’s natural for our readers to be concerned about where we go from here. So, I’ll begin by telling you which course brought me here in the first place.

First, I’m proud to be one of you — a north state native. I grew up on a fifth-generation farm in Flournoy (about 12 miles west of Corning), attended Corning High School and spent far more hours driving up and down The Esplanade in my Dodge Charger in the late 1970s than I’d care to admit. That started a love affair with Chico at a very young age that has never subsided.

Like my predecessor, I got hooked on this business early in life. I was 16 when my first byline appeared in the now-defunct Corning Graphic. I eventually ended up at the “big” paper in town, the Corning Daily Observer (yes, it was a daily then). This being a small paper in the purest sense, I also developed film, pasted up pages and drove motor delivery routes in a pinch. Best of all, since our office doubled as a Western Union and Salvation Army location for Corning, I had the unusual honor of delivering money and other much-needed goods to many of our readers.

Thanks to that, I quickly learned that when you participate in community journalism, there is no hiding from the public. You need to embrace it and you need to love it. Forty-two years after my byline first appeared in a newspaper, I still do.

After serving as sports editor in both Red Bluff and Eureka, I moved to the Bay Area in 1990. Don’t hold this against me, but I stayed there for 24 years, splitting my time equally between the Alameda Newspaper Group, Contra Costa Times and, finally, the San Francisco Chronicle, filling a mix of news, sports, columnist and editor roles along the way.

It was a far cry from Chico, and a really far cry from Flournoy. I heard thousands of points of views on every topic imaginable, broadened some personal horizons and learned a valuable lesson: There is never any harm in listening to other voices and other points of view. And if you can stay friends with people you disagree with, that’s a win for both sides.

After a quarter-century, I could cuss the traffic no more. I was ready to come home.

Eventually I reached out to Little to see what was happening with local newspapers; from there, I learned about the NorCal Design Center, a hub based at the Enterprise-Record that designs and edits 12 daily newspapers, including this one. I was hired as deputy director of our 26-person operation and became director a year later, a job I loved so much I vowed never to leave — unless I got the chance to be the editor of one our newspapers.

Much to my surprise, it happened, and, in one of the greatest blessings of my life, it happened here.

So, to finally answer the question — “What changes are you planning, and are you going to crash this ship by veering too far to the left, or too far to the right?” — I’ll just say this: I’ve learned to listen to (and appreciate) voices from every side. I’ve learned there are usually more than two sides, and I want more of those voices in the newspaper. I want more community involvement with the newspaper, and I want the newspaper to be more involved with the community.

I can promise there will be days when we anger conservatives by seeming too liberal, and I can promise there will be days when we anger liberals by seeming too conservative. If we don’t do both with some degree of regularity, we’re probably not doing our job.

My predecessor was passionate about Chico, and Oroville, and all of Butte and Glenn counties and the entire surrounding area. That’s not changing. David has left the building, but he left it in much better shape than he found it, largely because he did such an incredible job of hiring and mentoring talented journalists — many of whom remain, and all of whom have shown they’re going to continue to do great things.

And from my corner, I’ll do everything I can to keep that spirit of passionate community journalism alive. Thank you, everybody, for caring about our newspaper just as much as we care about you.

Want to meet the new editor? Mike Wolcott loves coffee and conversation. You can reach him at mwolcott@chicoer.com. He’s also on Twitter @m_mwolcott.